Robin Chapman posts a poem, most days, from fellow poets with one of her watercolors.

8/02/2010

American Life in Poetry: Column 280BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

Marilyn Kallet lives and teaches in Tennessee. Over the years I have read many poems about fireflies, but of all of them hers seems to offer the most and dearest peace.

Fireflies

In the dry summer field at nightfall,fireflies rise like sparks.Imagine the presence of ghostsflickering, the ghosts of young friends,your father nearest in the distance.This time they carry no sorrow,no remorse, their presence is so light.Childhood comes to you,memories of your street in lamplight,holding those last moments before bed,capturing lightning-bugs,with a blossom of the handletting them go. Lightness returns,an airy motion over the groundyou remember from Ring Around the Rosie.If you stay, the fireflies become firefliesagain, not part of your stories,as unaware of you as sleep, beingbeautiful and quiet all around you.